Clearing pending cases priority: India's youngest judge

A 21-year-old Mayank Pratap Singh, who is all set to become the youngest judge in the country after topping the Rajasthan Judicial Services (RJS) examination, wants to prioritise clearing of pending cases after he assumes his first posting as a district magistrate.

Mayank, who lives in Jaipur, cracked the RJS in the first attempt by scoring 169 marks out of 300 in the Mains exam and scored 28 out of 35 in the interview round to obtain the first rank. However, he is awaiting the document verification round.

Born into the family of teachers, he will be the first from his family to enter the world of the judiciary. He completed his five-year LLB course from the Rajasthan University, which ended earlier this year. His parents are teachers at the Rajasthan state government, presently posted in Udaipur.

He feels lucky to have cracked the exam at such a young age. Incidentally, the High Court of Rajasthan reduced the minimum age of becoming a judge from 23 years to 21 in 2019. "And me joining the system at such a young age will benefit me as I will get more time to learn, do more work and serve more people," he said.

Sharing his time table of studies to crack the entrance, Singh said that he used to devote 10-12 hours a day to the judicial services’ preparation.

“The combination of both hard work and smart work helped me crack the exams. It was self-study as I did not opt for any coaching classes. I had to undergo three stages, including prelims, mains followed by an interview and with the help of my family, I tried to maintain the stamina and confidence." He also chose to stay away from social media to stay away from distractions during the preparation time.

Singh chose science after Class 10, but his love for judiciary dominated it all. "My relatives had suggested that I should go for IIT-JEE, but my heart was in the judiciary as I find studying law the most interesting thing," Mayank shared with DH.